Today I'm linking up with Mrs. King to give you a little tour of my new classroom. At my last school, I thought I had a pretty big room. When my principal walked me into my new room I was literally speechless! It's HUGE and there are so many resources!! Then the day came for me to set my classroom up and within 5 minutes of being there, I called my husband (who was dropping the kids off at the sitters to come help me) and told him needed to hurry because I was overwhelmed. This is a pano of my room before.

It's huge! The problem that I was having was that there were chairs, flip form risers, a divider and 2 pianos. Everything stayed in my room so I had to get creative with where I put things so it didn't look awkward. Here's the finished result:

I like how it turned out because the front of the room is clearly where structured learning will take place and the back of the room is nice and open for movement and instrument activities. Here is what the front of the room looks like by my white board:

These are our Grand Behaviors that we follow (Whole Brain Teaching) and the small white paper with notes is for my Rockin' Good Behavior system.

These are my learning target signs made from dollar tree picture frames, my learning target freebie, and heavy duty magnets from hobby lobby. Use a dry erase marker and Voila! you can quickly change your learning target in between classes!

This is my iPad bulletin board. I plan on using iPads A LOT with my students now since they are older and more capable. This board contains my iPad rules Posters and my "Apps We Will Be Using" signs.

I'm super pumped that I only have 2 bulletin boards to worry about. My last classroom had A TON of bulletin board space and year after year it became impossible to think of new ideas. So the divider I mentioned earlier helps divide the space a little and also keeps students in the back row of chairs from touching the xylophones.

In the back of the room where the students will exit the class, I put up our Rockin Good Behavior music staves on the cabinets. They're easy to see and will be in a great spot to remind us to move their notes on the way out of the classroom.

There is also a little storage closet in my classroom. When I say little, I mean teeny tiny! But with such a small space I have BIG plans! I'm going to turn it into a recording studio! So when we're recording ourselves playing an instrument, singing a song, etc. Students will have a space in my classroom to go that will be quiet and won't pick up any of the extra noises in the classroom.

My plan is to create step-by-step directions for recording and uploading items to Schoology on the brown wall. Students will use the open counter space to place their iPad for recording. Can't wait to see how this works!!

I still have a few more things to put up here and there but for the most part my classroom is set up the way it will be the whole school year. I can't wait to get started on Monday!

So last year I embarked on my blogging journey and if you scroll down, you can see it didn't work out so well. This year I'm making a goal for myself to post at least once a month. If I can do more, great! So in that almost one year time span A LOT has changed! I got pregnant, had a baby, and got a new job! On June 6 we welcomed our beautiful baby girl!

She is seriously the BEST baby ever! She's already sleeping through the night! So I'm not as sleep deprived as I thought I would be which is awesome! About a week and a half after having her, I received a phone call from another principal in my school district asking if I wanted to come in for an interview for the 3rd-5th grade music position open in his school. I went in for an interview 2 1/2 weeks after having a baby and ended up getting the job!! I'm so excited for this position. I have been teaching K-2 for the past 5 years and am ready for a new challenge. Older kids can do a lot more and I'm even more excited about how I can incorporate technology MORE into my classroom and won't have to worry about spending half the class finding the "home button"! :) I ended up taking the first week of school off for maternity leave and will be starting on Monday. My next post will be all about my classroom and how I organized and decorated it! I can't wait to show you!

Author

I'm married to my wonderful husband David and am a mother to the sweetest and happiest little 2 year old boy and 3 month old Daughter! I teach 3-5 general music in Glenview, IL and love to incorporate as much technology as I can into my teaching.